Thai massage again

I have started to do craft markets with the Thai massage. I love working at craft markets. The atmosphere and vibe is great. The children and Greg also love going for the day.

I do markets at the different Waldorf schools. I do this as I homeschool using the Waldorf curriculum and feel that this is a great way to have the kids around certain aspects of Waldorf. The organic foods, the beautiful art work and the down to earth people.

I also do house calls. I charge more for these as I factor in my travel.

I do not do Hawaiian massage at the markets as you need to remove your clothes for this massage. It is the most wonderful, relaxing massage if done in a quiet place.  

Now I just need to build a client base.

Thai massage

This is the first time that I am writing about me. Normally my life is the children, their schooling, knitting for them or other family and friends and my husband. I love all these things with a passion or I would not do any of it.

Last year I hit the middle age crises stage! Well when I went into it deeper, Rudolf Steiner talks about this and he was dead on right down to the exact month.

Me, being a person who doesn't wallow in self pity, started to make plans. I made lists and lists and more lists. Then I prayed, never ceasing, as we are told to do. I wrote lists about things I wanted to study or businesses I wanted to start. I would get frustrated as we have no money for any of the above. And, I prayed more.

My dad asked me if he could come stay with me for a while as he has got a lovely lady friend and they were coming to see us. I am always happy to have people, so said yes.

Dad and Maureen came for dinner. Dad was staying here and Maureen with her friend.  

Maureen was going to be teaching Thai massage and LomiLomi Hawaiian massage while they were here, so that she could cover the cost of the trip.  

I joked with Greg and asked him if he had money on the credit card so that I could do the training. Maureen asked if I was serious and when I said yes she told me she would gift me with the training. I was ecstatic to say the least.

It took a lot of planning as I homeschool, but as this was something I really wanted - I made it work. Dad looked after the kids. I planned all their school work and had it ready for them.

I did about a month of training, coming home exhausted, as it is physical, and I was learning about muscles I had forgotten existed in my body. I had a lot to read and try to retain, and I was finding it quite difficult. I had last studied 18 years ago. I was marking and checking Caleb and Hannah's school work in the evenings, eating and going to sleep exhausted. I was enjoying myself intently!

What I did:

1. Thai reflexology foot massage

2. Thai introduction

3. Thai level 1

4. Thai level 2

5. Traditional Hawaiian massage level 1

6. Traditional Hawaiian massage level 2

7. Traditional Hawaiian massage level 3

               

Wow what a blessing.

Now the work began. I had to do my case studies.  I got really overwhelmed as I had done all the courses back to back and now I had to somehow sort it all out in my mind. So, what I did was start doing the case studies for the Thai introduction  massage. When I got those done, I sent them off to Maureen who by now had gone back.

I then did my case studies for Thai foot massage, and then for Thai level 1 and then level 2. By this stage the massage was part of me and my love for it was growing daily.

Greg bought me a beautiful chocolate brown leather massage table for my Hawaiian massage and a floor mat for my Thai massage.

Maureen came back a couple of months later and I helped her to teach Thai massage at one of our local international beauty colleges. This just helped settle it all for me. I love doing massage.

Last week we went to see my oma who is turning 88 this week. She told me that my great opa had also been a masseur in Holland. And, that my opa's brother, who now lives in America, was also a masseur until he retired. They did Traditional massage.

So the conclusion that I have come to is that massage must be in the genes.

Hot-water bottle knitted covers

Now that we are in mid Autumn going into Winter, it is a good time to knit a hot-water bottle cover. This is a small project so it is great for the children to knit.

It is knitted in stocking stitch with a rib polar neck, but is easy enough to knit in garter stitch, moss stitch, twisted rib, etc. Play with different patterns and see what you come up with. Send me photos of what you knit.

Stocking stitch hot-water bottle cover

Materials

• 50g double knit wool or yarn of your choice
• 4mm knitting needles
• Tapestry needle
• Hot water bottle (bag part approximately 26x20cm)

Abbreviations

• K. - Knit
• P. - Purl
• K2 tog. - Knit 2 together
• K1t. - Increase one by knitting twice into the stitch
• St. - Stitch
• Sts. - Stitches
• Ws. - Wrong side

To Make

Cast on 35 sts.

1st row: (ws) p.

2nd row: k1t, k to last st, k1t.

3rd row: k1t, p to last st, k1t.

Repeat rows 2 and 3 until there are 45 sts. (row 6).

Continue working stocking stitch up to row 67.

68th row: k2 tog, k to last 2 sts. K2 tog. (43 sts)

69th row: k2tog, p to last 2 sts, k2 tog. (41 sts)

70th row: k2 tog, k to last 2 sts, k2 tog. (39 sts)

71sts row: k2 tog, p to last 2 sts, k2 tog. (37 sts)

72nd row: k2 tog twice, k to last 4 sts, k2 tog twice. (33 sts)

73rd row: k2 tog twice, p to last 4 sts, k2 tog twice.(29 sts)

74th row: k2 tog twice, k to last 4 sts, k2 tog twice.(25 sts)

75th: k2 tog twice, p to last 4 sts, k2 tog twice. (21 sts)

Slip the remaining 21 sts onto a stitch holder.

The back and the front are knitted the same.  

Cut the yarn to a length of about 22cm and sew the front to the back for a couple of centimetres down the side, starting from the remaining stitches. Place the stitches of the front and back on one needle and continue working in rib until the rib measures double the length of the funnel section of the hot-water bottle (about 40 rows). Cast off and sew up the rest of the bag.

As an added something you can blanket stitch around the edge of the bag.

I hope you have fun knitting this. My mother-in-law is knitting up a storm with them. I think she has knitted about twelve.

Happy knitting!

Scouts, Cubs and Kontiki

This has been such a busy term for us with Scouts and Cubs. Hannah and Sheth have both been invested. Sheth is now eight. He was not ready to join Cubs at seven but is definitely ready this year - so much so that he is quiet mischievous there.

Since the first week of term the Scouts have been practicing for the Kontiki competition. They were making soap carvings, masks, rockets that actually shoot up into the air, a space mobile etc. It was great fun!

Well the competition finally arrived on the week end of the 16 March. We dropped Hannah and Caleb at Sandvlei a bit late as Caleb was helping our Durbanville Cubs.

There is such a nice group of parents in Scouts that we all ended up talking for hours.

We went home Friday night as I had a market Saturday morning. After the market we went back to Kontiki.

Last year we came seventh, and this year we came fourth! Well done 1st Durbanville! It was a long, fun, exhausting weekend.

Grade two maths

Sheth and I have been having a lot of fun doing maths, the last couple of weeks.

We have been recapping our four processes. We have heard stories about the processes. The monkey and the crocodile was for subtraction.

We heard about King Turnip Counter, which opened the door for us to count to 100 twice and then count backward from 100.  

We also drew big circles on our outside cement. We then numbered  them up to 40. Sheth walked on the numbers while counting. He walked backwards as he counted backwards. He then jumped as we recapped our 2, 5 and 10 times tables.  

Then to the book work! Sheth drew lily leaves in water, he numbered them and then coloured certain numbers for his skip counting. He has the sweetest turtle which fits on the leaves, so we make up games and play.

We then moved on to the 3 and 6 times tables.

I am teaching Waldorf maths and we use the odd word sheet from Math-U-See.

Sheth enjoys maths where Caleb never did. This is because Caleb did Math-U-See only: book work, book work, book work! No time to play and learn through play. If only I had found Waldorf home schooling sooner.

Homeschooling conference

On Friday night the 20 January, Greg and I, went to a homeschooling conference.

It was run by a woman named Martie Du Plessis who is an Educational Consultant and Remedial Therapist. Her business is called Dynamis and her web address is www.dynamislearning.co.za

I have been homeschooling now for eight years, so why did we go? Well, Caleb has always been a challenge to teach, ever since we began to learn to read and write. His spelling is not good and he does not enjoy writing because of it. With Martie being a remedial teacher, and the fact that she works with the different temperaments to see what the best way to teach each individual child is, made me curious. I also needed help as to how I can help Caleb to learn to spell.

I have said to Greg that I am wanting Caleb to self-school and work by the age of 14. He already looks after and feeds two horses for my friend Angeleen, so I know he is capable. I learnt a lot at the conference and it made Greg and I look at certain things in our family that we want to change.

So here is a brief overview of the evening:

In South Africa our biggest crisis is Aids, and our second biggest crisis is Education. 17 percent of our matrics get jobs and 25 percent of our educated people with degrees get jobs. That is according to the statistics!

We are the only country in the world who needs a matric certificate. This is a political move. It has been proven that all we need to be successful is a grade eight. Children from 2 till 16 need heart, our love, and discipline. From the age of 17, they need to be mentored. She then said children must be self working when they are 14!

We should be teaching them 1. Accountability 2. Responsibility 3. Ownership.

The aim of homeschooling is to teach our children to be job creators and not job seekers. This means they need good characters and values. They should know how to work with their money and not work for money. If you are confident that your child will be equipped for life, then they will be.

This was the most important thing that she said on Friday night: "We need to give our best to our spouse and children, we need to nurture our families the most!" We should teach our boys to provide for the home, and to teach your girls to be homemakers, a wife and a nurturer.

Children up to and including grade 9 should not need to work for more than about 2 hours a day and from grade 10 and up no more than 4 hours per day.

Maths and languages should be taught layer upon layer. Because of this you should not change your math or language programme.

We must teach a child how to learn.

1. Research  
2. Hands on, projects 
3. Real life situations, how does it work? Do it. 
4. Telling back 
5. Creative expression, what does it have to do with me? Teach our children how to work with their passion. Get them books on it, tell them stories related to it, etc.

This is a sequence that we will hopefully teach our children.

Co-dependent , dependent, independent, interdependent! We all get to a stage of being independent but are we all interdependent?

Are we building a relationship with our children? Are we teaching character development to our children? These two things are what is going to make our children successful or not.

I know this was written in a very higgledy-piggledy way. I am sorry, but I am not sure how to do it any other way right now.

I know I haven't written much on my blog for a while, I will try keep it up again. It all depends on my time!

Starting school

We have started school. It is going to be a busy year all round and I am tired already!

Sheth and I have been working everyday and his reading is doing so well. In Waldorf, the children learn to read in grade 2. And, so this is grade 2! We will be doing Nature Stories, and Saints this year. We will be expanding on our maths going into vertical adding, subtracting, times tables, etc.

Hannah will be doing Ancient Mythologies, botany, Greek Mythology going into Greek History, some South African history, and the first block of Geometry.

Caleb will be doing the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, Physics, Chemistry, the last block of Geometry, Health and the Body, Physiology, Astronomy and some South African history.

We all do Afrikaans, recorder, maths and English. I find it quite difficult to do it all so our recorder and Afrikaans tends to not go as fast as I would hope, but we still plod along with them.

Our extra curricular subjects are Cubs, Scouts, Pottery, Woodwork, Piano and Drama. As you can see we have a full schedule ahead of us.

I am teaching Caleb and Hannah to work alone. I have bought them diaries and write their work in it for each day. This seems to working well for now! Hannah basically works without my help at all. Caleb on the other hand will need alot more of me training him to work alone.

And so the year has begun.